Tame The Web

There’s been quite an evolution in one Office lately.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

Do you have to be sooooo techno-fluent? Maybe not. Should you surround yourself with people who are?  Great leaders show they have the tendency to seemingly accomplish great acts alone.  Often they rely on many individuals who have extreme proficiencies in areas they do not. Do you have to know how to do everything -probably not.

Should you understand the conversation about technology? Yes, it helps you participate in a meaningful way.  This is why we have to ensure access for populations that are under-served.

And …[Obama Staff]…officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.

What’s the real aversion to using technology strategically?  What we may find is not that we dislike technology if we really think about it. If we think about who we can benefit by sharing information, this changes where we feel the resistance.  We may feel it less internally; we may find that we are willing to endure more to help others.

It may be that some of us are far more discerning and critical of sub-par technologies.

All of us are no doubt using many successful technologies in our every day lives (and yes, I absolutely believe a book is a piece of technology so successful that very few people think about how successful it is).

Use discernment advantageously.  Remind those of us who adopt too early and heap platitudes upon Pownce, “Hey, have you thought about why it won’t work?” Ah! So much better than, “I don’t get it.”

This does not abdicate personal responsibility; instead it requires our participation and collaboration.

Use your abilities to become part of the conversation; do not let your abilities become stagnant allowing yourself to be removed from the conversation.

We think, “Should the most powerful office in the world be among the technologically most proficient?” Watch the evolution we all must go through:

http://www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=white-house-web

We must use the new tools; we must be mindful of tradition.  We think, “If I’m not good at it, who is?” We think, “who will this benefit?”  What else do we think?

~Lee~

Congrats to TTW Contributing writer Lee LeBlanc for his essay on the future of federated search. He is second runner up in the federated search blog’s writing contest. “The aim of the contest was to predict the future of federated search.”

Read his entire essay here.

The 2030’s versions of the iPhone and G1 project into space. Using a helioiPhone, the user enters the visual search world. Using light and air, users walk into their search worlds to see and haptically interact with the results. No longer will you be confined to a keyboard and screen. While the search may start in a simple box, virtually projected worlds from handheld devices are entered to explore the results. We walk about these “search terrascapes” our search agents created for us. When they bring the results back, much like Marco Polo from distant lands, they present us with our results. The network, the tools, and the user work together exploring deeper into the areas of search. Doing so helps a researcher find what may contain the ideas of future research. Virtual worlds are created to store and easily share from anywhere. All of these searches populate a virtual information universe.

From: –Best Careers 2009: Librarian “A Day in the Life. You work in a small municipal library, where you have to do a little of everything. You start your day by leafing through catalogs from online database publishers and book reviews in Library Journal to decide which titles to add to your collection. Next, it’s out to the reference desk, where visitors regularly ask how to find something. Sometimes, it’s esoteric; often, it’s the bathroom. Later, you teach a class: an advanced lesson in Googling. Next, it’s back to the reference desk, but you’re soon interrupted by a group of boisterous kids, so you have to turn into schoolmarm: “You’ll have to be quiet, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.” You end your day reading about “automated librarianship”: data storage systems that let the public get needed resources without the help of a live librarian. Tomorrow, you decide, you’ll start writing a grant proposal to develop a computer kiosk that will help patrons find health information.”

–Best Careers 2009: Librarian
By Marty Nemko
Posted December 11, 2008

In a way, this describes what you should not be spending your time doing.  I’m certain we’ll split hairs over this. Sure, everyone must pitch in -at all levels and all roles. Heck, in my old position I regularly cleaned the restrooms.  I assure you I was not paid specifically to do this.

I’m going to ask you a question now: Should librarians, as their regular daily duties,  be made to :

-give out directions to the bathrooms,

-enact police actions against “noise offenders’,

-leaf through … who has time to leaf through and isn’t there something called a collection policy and an ILS that can pre-determine what materials your library should buy (the point being your time is better spent elsewhere). Fine- we still need people to review some materials but this should be a very very small part of the job.  The majority should be spent interacting with people- not books.

-handle the esoteric question?…er…how about handling the “esoteric” patrons?  If you spend any time in a library of any kind, you will eventually deal with peculiar behaviors more than you will ever deal with esoteric questions.  There’s no mention of the esoteric patron who screams loudly as you kindly tell them that they cannot shower in the public drinking fountain. And I’m not poking fun at the folks who scream as they talk. Seems like an extreme example?  There isn’t a week I don’t hear about or read about some annoyed library staffer who cannot handle people with pscyhological disabilities and feels the need to blast this person with angry blog-platitudes rather than empathetic action.

-And, what about the Technological Fluency that is required of a librarian? I completely understand you may not dig technology. The absolute avoidance of being well versed, though, in a critical language needed for success in our profession is rabidly amiss.  You do not want to be a stranger in a strange land unable to understand the strange language.  Without being able to read, write, and speak eloquently as an advocate for the appropriate and strategic use of technology, your IT opponents will run circles around your arguments until they’ve stereotyped you as a Luddite clutching a book by candle light (which could be a really cool flickr pool to start).

Maybe your answer is yes? Why then? Again, I understand the need for everyone to pitch in. Believe me when I say I see no point in sitting at an antiquated desk or believing that you are above answering certain kinds of questions. My point is: should that constitute the majority of your job?  Should your job be described this way?

I welcome your comments. Though, I obviously cannot cover every valid point. This one matters most: librarianship has changed but you still need to get back in the box. Merge the old traditions into the new. How can librarians retain the best of what they did and what they now must do?  Maybe like this:

“McCracken County Public Library attributes much of its recent growth and change to the Good to Great philosophy… applying it and the questions it asks to every aspect from team building to community involvement… The goal should not be to create a great library… but to create great lives in the people served by the library.
–Iris

Now that’s a job, career,work, life I want.

~Lee~

On the way to DevLearn2008, I pulled out my book and to read. I noticed the person flying next to me had a book too. As we taxied down the flightline, I asked her what she was reading.

Turns out she was a recently retired high school science teacher. We chatted at length about reading, learning, and teaching. There came a point in our conversation where I actually cracked open the Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts. I started reading to this teacher a passage about how intertwined are movement, space and learning.  She remarked, “Yes, if our educational programs were actually geared to finding ways to unite movement, learning, space, and reading, we’d have a smarter group of kids out there.”

Deb Hanson gets this. Deb sees the space, the reading, the learning and movement to action are all tied together. She sees that teaching and reaching into her students lives may inspire them, to read. She realizes that she must play a role being overlooked in most school libraries.

I’ve read recently about what libraries should/should not be doing. What roles should we play? Do we foster lifelong learning? I feel these questions are for any type of library. Should the teaching opportunity arise, and you feel that books and libraries are so important, you must seize that opportunity no matter what type of library/ librarian you are. Any type of librarian must first be a teacher who fosters a love of reading.  Consider that our first role.

Do we teach information literacy? Do we control the information? I do know that our one primary role should be inspiring a love of reading among young readers. Should the opportunity present itself you must be ready to inspire someone about reading. I’ve found that most students either had a bad experience or no experience of their school library or media center. Especially boys. The space was unwelcoming. The love of reading literally nonexistent.

There could be many reasons for this. We can minimize those reasons. Try a little harder. Deciding that our fundamental role is to inspire is a great way to unite emerging technologies with the traditions that libraries and librarians do so well. Who has better access to resources and free, open creative spaces? Libraries and librarians provide free and open spaces for inquiry. There’s no better place for creating the emotional connection for a love of reading than in the playground of the library. You need space for that. B&N isn’t a free space. Consider that our second role: a third place or space for creativity to grow.

Space: we need it to work. I make no secret of my absolute disdain for cubicles. Industrial cube farms are a system of control.  Nothing more. The cubicles do nothing to foster creative “group work”.  You know that thing we’re all supposed to be good at yet everyone hates doing. Cubicles replicate the neat and tidy rows you were forced to sit in during school. (You should stop and think about how you work as part of a team.  Seriously.  I’ll wait).  Cubicles create a false sense of a just-right spatial isolation for work environments. The idea is that they give the work we do, as if we’re Goldilock’s, just the right amount of space. Management is given the impression in an open office plan, since the workers are all sitting together with low walls and able to see each other, this fosters unity. Really, they’re interrupting each others’ creative process often unknowingly.  With seemingly removed obstacles like walls and doors this somehow facilitates a cohesive working environment.

That’s the idea.  Some managers really believe this. They also believe that if you are given a door with an office you will retreat inside never to be seen. Think it doesn’t matter? Space matters deeply. Years of research stand as a quiet testament to the overstressed worker who averages an interruption every ten minutes.  Imagine if someone created a space for you to develop, truly develop who you are at work -or a space for you to develop as a reader?  Why should work extract everything from you and provide nothing but money in return?

Imagine being young again and what it would be like to learn how to read in a truly inspiring space. Then read how Deb Hanson designed her space to foster a love of reading.

From: Deb Hanson
Sent:Monday,December08,20088:33PM
To: LeBlanc, Lee; Michael Stephens
Subject: Library transformations…Hey Guys…My library transformations have begun
…I’m moving my 4th graders to the current K-3 library across campus and my current 4-8 library will become much more of a “middle school” space for the older kids (gr.5-8). With their input and ideas, we are re-arranging spaces, moving EVERY book in the library (that’s over 10,000 books), bringing in cool RED video rocker chairs and bean bags, putting up posters and painting (though that may have to wait till summer) and designing ways for students to interact with the SMART Board that I’m installing… When they come back from winter beak in January they will have much more kid-friendly spaces and more opportunities to interact with books, video-production stations, internet stations, and interactive learning spaces…I’m SO excited. Thanks for always being in my head you’re your ideas and inspiration…pushing me to listen to my patrons and make the libraries work for them! -Deb

Just to be clear: that is how you foster a love of reading, while using space creatively, and uniting emerging technologies with the solid traditional skill sets librarians do so well.  That is strategic thinking in work clothes. This is using space in human ways.

~Lee~

update: that “Private:” prefix was tripping me out.  Turns, Michael Stephens, being the Master Admin of TTW (and rightly so) can published posts at will.  I had marked it private as I was in converstation with Deb to make sure I could use her private email in a public post.  When I confirmed this with her, I had forgotten all about the ability to mark posts private in Wordpress. So noted.

 Kyle Jones asked the TTW gang in an email:

“We talk about the social web in terms of visible relationships being made, but we shouldn’t overlook the structure underneath these relationships. I stumbled over this while looking at the new Wordpress 2.7 interface: http://gmpg.org/xfn/ Just ponder it if you have a second.”

I did think about it. Nice to have some convo over email. We do this a bit (Michael and Katharine too) and some turn into a post.

Garfield talked about citation analysis. I really think he was talking about how to express connections. I always like thinking about how to express connections. Finding, creating, and combining interesting methods for showing connections and structures is a wicked cool idea. What we may find, as an example, are underlying structures that look like the intertwined supportive, connective roots of the Slash Pines. During fierce storms the Pines interwoven roots support each other. Their network of roots are impressive. Singularly, they are strong. But their indomitable strength is found by how uniquely they are interwoven among their community. Created one-of-a-kind social representations of something greater than ourselves may show profound unknown connections. These underlying structures which are relationships to other people could be a status of one’s physical mental, moral, ethical or spiritual health. It could speak to a rich life or something else…It may just be a way to find new connections.

Connections and ways to represent them: is that where it’s at? Maybe but I think there’s also something intangible too. I’m not saying people with the most myspace, facebook friends or people who can show FOAF or XFN relationships have the most unique lives and deep connections to their aqs, friends and families. It could show though human relationships in a new light and inform our understanding of how better to connect to each other. If nothing else, I find the fact that I can continually meet and come across fascinating people absolutely something to get excited about. It’s just cool. Puts the serendipty back into the finding process. I’ve heard that lamented quite a bit about libraries. I wonder if people are reallly just missing that from their own lives period.

Expressing human relationships. Fascinating. Part of the next stage for libraries. I really like the idea of XFN. Kinda seems like a way to build an organic LinkedIn.

After this exchange Michael said, “take or find something that says: human connections.”

The photo is of a Houston Tweetup. That’s a physical meeting of Twitter folks.  This IRL (in real life) is crossing with VL (virtual life). But really, it’s about how we can make connections through technology.

Don’t forget to share those holiday photos on Flickr.

~Lee~

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/
Used via CC license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

I walk. I work. I stay more alert. I feel better at the end of the day. Research supports this.

Plenty of other people dig the idea it seems. The rising term is “Treadmill Desk.” Units go for about $4,000 but I hacked mine together for about $400. Why? I was finding ways to simply get up from my desk to take a walk. I’d do stuff like park in the last parking space farthest out from the building. I just personally feel better when I get some physical activity in. Being that I suspended my martial arts training and regular workouts (school!), I wasn’t feeling the best. And I’ve wanted to get/make a treadmill desk for awhile now. So I did. Thankfully my Director supports me modding my workspace.

1. “James Levine, M.D. and his colleagues in the NEAT (Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis) lab at Mayo Clinic have pioneered an “Office of the Future” — a fully functioning office that bears a marked resemblance to a gym. Complete with treadmills that serve as both desks and computer platforms and a two-lane walking track that serves as a meeting room, Dr. Levine and his entire staff have a unique, active work environment.”

2. “Between eight and fourteen hours on the average workday, I’m staring at a screen and typing on a keyboard. … Rather than sitting, you walk at a slow pace. Because the human body has evolved to walk long distances, a healthy person can comfortably walk several miles a day. After just a few days, I was consistently walking about 6 or 7 hours a day. It’s been about a month now, and I’ve used the treadmill desk every day I’ve worked from home.”

Maybe I can guilt Casey into walking at work again? That’s a pretty sweet set-up.

Music clip credits: Radiohead, High and Dry.

Lee LeBlanc
~TTW Contributor~

For your review: the youtube video causing a sensational discussion about cheating students.

–

And a pretty interesting piece by US News & World Report:

“…More tech-savvy professors: Barbara Christe, program director of biomedical engineering technology at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, says she usually catches three or four students a year with her Web “honey pots.” She sets up phony Web pages that specifically answer questions in her homework assignments and tests with blatantly out-of-date or inaccurate information. Because they are tailored for her course material, her sites typically show up first in Google searches. It’s easy then for Christe to snag those students who took the bait and simply cut and pasted information. Instead of automatically flunking the guilty students (who are typically freshmen), in most cases she tries to use the incidents as a chance to teach how to correctly vet a source.

Christe also often signs up as a student for her own online courses under an assumed name. That way, she says, her alter ego gets many of the E-mails her students send to each other. Occasionally, she’s caught students posting answers. More often, she says, she’ll see an E-mail from a student complaining or asking for help. Then she’ll contact the student and say, “I heard from a student that Assignment 7 is really giving you a challenge,” and offer to help. … “We’re gradually waking up to the fact that in real life, it is all about working together…”

—

Lee LeBlanc
~TTW Contributor~

or “Do I Dare Blog About My Classwork, Re-mix the Content for Blog Posts, or Share Syllabus with Fellow Classmates?” That’s the question I have too. Kyle beat me to it -but I still may follow up in another post. My points below touch on this through the Browser choice question I framed. (Thanks Kyle).

Chrome is impressive. The browser loads fast; this, I like. Tab-browsing, now a ubiquitous, expected feature, receives a new twist with Chrome. Chrome gives each tab its own process. Think about it this way: each tab is a different person, each person can be given a task. They do it completely on their own and then give you back the completed work. You don’t have to nag them or wait on them to finish. If you’re a power user, then you may truly appreciate how responsive this makes your browser. It frees the latency, stall, hang, and frustrating crashes that cripple other browsers. Browser-based apps seem faster too.

Chrome’s security issues -er, security flap aside. I see no point to the security issues.  Any browsing you do can be hacked unless you are taking some seriously robust steps like IP-address masking, anonymous proxy, disposable virtual machine environments, random search requesting, and/or tunneling through a VPN that securely passes all your traffic. You would be surprised how transparent the information you pass really is.  If a hacker really targets you with a man-in-the-middle attack, bummer. Fortunately, most of us are very very very small fish in very very very very big pond.

Alas, Chrome doesn’t have nearly features that I’ve come to rely upon in Firefox. I do significant portions of my work, school, and personal life online. (I know you’re probably not fretting over my social life. Just to let you know: I do get out into the real world. It’s tough out there. Often I just stay in when I’m not at Iaido or Aikido and watch Heroes).

• I use an add-on in Firefox that makes working with google docs really easy. I write nearly all my school discussion board posts in Google Docs -it auto saves. Blackboard does not. I actually made that noob mistake in the fall of 2006. Imagine this: you’re forced to use a system that does not save your work.  And you get no warning to that fact.  Not fun.  And, if Firefox crashes I’ve actually been able to recover work.
  

• All my contacts go into highrisehq.com. Have you ever lost your contact data? Lost your cellphone? Ever not been able to get it into your desktop contact manager? Yes, I know I have to have internet access to get at my contacts.  Paper is not perfect either.  Highrise loads fast and I’ve made some hacks and tweaks for it in Firefox.
  

• I gain the “community of users” benefits because of the tweaks developed for gmail by Firefox users. So.many.good.ones. For tasks, they get pushed into rememberthemilk.com -I admit to forgetting my 2-3 discussion board postings a week.  I set reminders now.  None of my assignments are due on exactly the same day.  I am often in gmail processing my tasks and I forward stuff about school all the time. Fast shortcuts when you have a lot to do coupled with extensions can save a lot.

• I have Firefox personalized for the work I do online. I share work I produce through slideshare.net, youtube.com, flickr.com, and delicious.com. We produce all this content in online classes. We lock it up in this system called Blackboard. Everything we do in my program is online: why are we not sharing our work with other emerging professionals in the field?  Why not be networking with other library students at other schools? (I’d be happy to network with any of you. I’m a big believer in the power of our physical and electronic social networks). Or why not capitalize on massively distributed collaboration? What about the new forms of scholarship and honing our abilities to work online with our colleagues, all remotely. I’ve made some good friends at other library schools. I’ve become good friends with other emerging professionals in the field through social network contacts. They’ve taught me as much as I learned in my classes. In sharing ideas with them, I’m challenged to explain things more clearly. We have a vested interest in helping each other succeed. We take the time to truly give insightful feedback and commentary on each others’ work. Sometimes, we just share what we face in life.  Often, I find receiving critical assessment from someone you have some degree of familiarity with removes the reflexive barriers we use to respond. It’s hard not to infer missing information sometime. Because of having personalized Firefox, I speed up all this work. It’s not just speed, the tasks are easier too.

• Little add-ons mean a lot. My immediate family members prefer e-mail to stay in touch. We live in 3 different states. To stay in touch with my friends and family members who live across the country, we make use of online tools to communicate. While I poked fun at the thought of being secure online, Firefox can be set-up in way that creates a higher level of personal security. This is important for a lot of people.  Other browsers tend to lack add-on abilities to create a more secure browsing experience.

• Add to this all the other benefits I get with Firefox. I find library school to be an excellent prompt for blogging. From the ideas in class, I break down the writing I did. I look for pieces to connect to what other bloggers talk about. I’ve found other (library student) bloggers thinking about similar items in unique ways. If you’re not thinking on ways of how to get more out of your schooling, by using all these online tools, why not? It’s a great way to increase the plasticity of your mind while in school. (It may also help you prove what you put down on your resume too; listing off software you’re expert at isn’t going to cut it anymore).  The extensions I run in Firefox make it easier to share when I’m tired and a bit behind at the end of the day.
  

Could I really do some of this in Chrome? Sure.

What do all these have to do with Firefox then? Personalization for the end user. For these tasks Firefox stands strong as a relatively stable browser with extensibility and personalization at the core. Firefox saves me that much time.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -George Bernard Shaw

When I add up all the time that it takes me to do each of these discrete activities. It doesn’t seem like much at first.

• Copy and paste here. Find link there.
  
• Chase down that piece of (mis)information.
  
• Strip the text of its formatting so it can be read.
  
• Pass along other relevant links to my friend who asked about “information drift”.
  
• Access the article. But strip the link of the proxy address and make it a tiny url so it does not break.
• open and convert that pdf without launching resource hogging Adobe Reader.
  
• Find that physical address. Map it.  Send the directions.
  
• Track that package for my boss because it said it was delivered.
  
• Finish that Pecha Kucha PowerPoint and share the notes out.
  
• All while taking few phone calls and transferring a few files.
  
• And editing a group document.
  
• And recovering from a Windows crash.
  
• And giving some distant tech-support.

My days are not always that busy; yet some are.  We wonder why we’re tired- yeesh.

“That’s all anecdotal Lee!”  I hear that.  How did I really figure out that customizing Firefox saves me a lot of time?  It was easy.  I counted minutes.

Often I work on multiple computers.  I would be forced to use Internet Explorer.  I could quickly see how much longer it was to complete tasks. With my FF mods, I could complete routine tasks in seconds. Minutes would pass with those same tasks on an unpersonalized browser.  Add this up over a day and: 20 minutes of an hour I could save. Time saved equals less stress, more work output, and a general feeling of somehow managing an ever-increasing set of responsibilities in an ever-decreasing amount of minutes. Who isn’t being asked to do more, with less?

A large community of users that have adopted Firefox and developed add-ons or extensions for Firefox enables me to shave seconds.  Seconds matter. While that doesn’t sound like a big deal at the end of the day, this can often add up to two hours straight. (It’s good I do things like Tai Chi and yoga I suppose).

Chrome has a lot of potential. No doubt about it. Yet, until it meets the level of usability Firefox achieves, I enjoyed the swift experience of testing it over the few weeks it’s been out.

Below is an extensive array, at least to me, of add-ons to make Firefox function in a way that increases my online productivity. Some of the deeper hacks and tweaks I made are a discussion for another day. But, I’d love to hear who else uses (x)-browser and how you’ve tweaked it. I’m always open to switching browsers.

Here’s my list of Firefox add-ons.
* Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.1.3
* Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
* Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper 1.0.5
* All-in-One Sidebar 0.7.6

* Better GCal 0.3
* Better GReader 0.4
* Better YouTube 0.4.3
* BetterCache 1.21
* BugMeNot 2.0

* Copy Plain Text 0.3.3
* Delicious Bookmarks 2.0.104
* DownloadHelper 3.2.2
* dragdropupload 1.6.8

* Flashblock 1.5.6
* Greasemonkey 0.8.20080609.0

* Mouse Gestures Redox 2.0.2
* MR Tech Toolkit (formerly Local Install) 6.0.1
* NoScript 1.8
* PDF Download 2.0.0.0
* PopupMaster 1.2.2

* Skype extension for Firefox 2.2.0.94
* Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7pre.080830
* Tiny Menu 1.4.9
* TinyUrl Creator 1.0.5

~Lee LeBlanc~
TTW Contributor

So, you have a new laptop?  Read up:

Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

Then, if you’re like me, you find ways to make the Blackboard CMS less time consuming.  This should include Professors too. (It could apply generally to most course management systems).

- Top 10 Reasons Faculty Fail When Using Blackboard CMS

- The Ultimate Guide to BlackBoard: 100 Tips & Tutorials

TTW: Lee

The first involves your daily work environment. If you are a developer who hangs out at a coffee shop then you might be surprised to know that in an attempt to draw more students in, many academic libraries have built small coffee shops into their floor plans, and that many larger institutions will offer free Wi-Fi throughout the buildings. Further, you’ll find that their floor-plans often offer both low and high traffic/noise areas in which to work, and either might work for you, depending on your tastes. –William Hicks

TTW: Lee

Reading:

1. What does it mean to be well educated?
2. Flow
3. Pornified: How pornography is damaging our lives, our relationships, and our families
4. Bodhisattva Warriors
5. The Genius of Flexibility
6. Ultramarathon Man
7. ISD from the Ground Up

I was also talking with a friend about how all I’ve been reading is blog posts, articles for school, and book chapters.  This left me wondering: do I still have the stamina to read anything of substantial length? I spent last weekend traveling.  I read two books up and back on the flight to Phillie.  And the Skymall catalog.  And the Emergency Instructions sheet -twice.  Then, when I got home I spent every night devouring another one.  Often falling asleep because I didn’t want to stop reading it.  I’m also in between classes now.  That helps.

People are conversing over the worry that all this web-based information is shortening their attention span for reading books. For myself, I’ve put to rest that idea.  These bits of information I consume via email, rss, blogs, tweets, and online articles aren’t affecting my ability for sustained, intellectual reading. (Whew! personally I did wonder). I have been reading since I was pretty young though and never have I lost my interest in kids books.  I wonder if it’s the ability to read that is being affected.  Or that most people have yet to develop the ability to focus their mind on what they choose.  It’s like competing in Judo -without training any of your physical abilities.  You cannot focus your mind on what you wish if you do not spend time training it in ways you want to develop. Meditation could be a key in developing these mental abilities.  Heck, just setting aside time to read and assimilate what you’re reading could.  Above all else: read, connect and share.

TTW: Lee

Over the last month, I worked with Jesse Thomas of JESS3, to create a new graphic that helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web. The Conversation Prism is free to use and share. It’s our contribution to a new era of media education and literacy.   –Brian Solis.

TTW: Lee

New Jalisco Library, Gudalajara, Mexico (competition)

Over 200 Boeing 727 and 737 fuselages are stacked in a north-south slant in relation to sun exposure for energy efficiency. Two shifts in the direction of the main axis of the fuselages generate two large open spaces within the stack.

The building utilizes the space inside the fuselages to contain and organize functions that require enclosed spaces – such as book collections, meeting rooms and administration offices, – while the 2 large open spaces house a large atrium with all the reading areas on one side and two auditoriums on the other.

The library program is centered around the large glazed atrium, which develops vertically through the entire cross section of the building. The lower part of the atrium, located on the second level and accessible directly from the new plaza thru escalators and elevators, functions as a lobby and information center. At each upper level, the reading areas bridge between the two opposite interior facades generated by the cross sections of the fuselages that look onto the atrium.

A transparent LCD system is integrated in the atrium glazing and projects the library activities onto the new plaza expanding its presence on the outside with moving images and text.

The fuselage is the only part of a decommissioned airplane that cannot be effectively recycled. The cost of its demolition exceeds the profit of aluminum resale. A huge amount of fuselages lays in the deserts of the western states. Boeing 727 and 737 are historically the most sold commercial planes and therefore the most common in these graveyards. They are sold at very low prices completely stripped and in great structural conditions.

The fuselage becomes the basic module of this building. It is insulated and furnished according to the program. The internal subdivision generated by the existing floor joists is used to respond to functional needs: the upper section is used for inhabitation while the lower one houses independent and interconnected mechanical systems: HVAC, electrical, cabling, and a conveyor belts network for the mechanical distribution of the books.

Personally, I’ve always thought the building should inspire you to think differently.  That should be a library’s first responsibility: to make you think different.

TTW: Lee

It’s not a trick question.  You don’t have to drive the change, just be a part.  Sometimes, it’s hard to see what we need to change until someone points it out anyway.

All statements are prefaced by “Within the next five years…”

#3…the majority of reference questions will be answered through Google Answer or something
like it. There will no longer be reference desks or reference offices in the library. Instead,
public services staff offices will be located outside the physical library. Metasearching will
render reference librarians obsolete.

http://www.taigaforum.org/

What provocative statement would you add?

Thanks Chuck T. for the link.

Contributor: Lee

By Stephen J. Dubner

Folio reports that Time Inc. is starting a new magazine-subscription service called Maghound that sounds a bit like Netflix’s movie model:

Maghound.com allows consumers to choose titles from a variety of publishers for mix-and-match “subscriptions” where they pay one monthly fee and have the ability to switch titles at any time. Unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren’t locked in their memberships and can cancel whenever they wish. Ventresca says that Maghound.com offers “flexibility, choice, control, and personalization.”

Will it work?

–via http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

noticed by: lee.

Course Structure
Originally uploaded by Alex Halavais

How do you create a structure to engage people in their learning process? Any institution that deals with learning should consider this.

Free the process from the jail we know as Course Management Systems. Not.the.Solution. CMSs are closed private schools where we wonder collectively if anything interesting is going on inside. Where’s the real learning take place? Interaction. On content creation. Through conversation and comments. Creatively posting parts of your assignments to flickr. That rocks.

Imagine if you made your CMS open. What a marketing piece! Would the caliber of fascinating work that students put out, in say the library field, increase? It may. When you know your peers are watching, you may perform better. You may work a bit harder.

Another reason: show students that what they produce is a part of the real world. Interact with them where they are, on the web. Conne.ct t.he d.ots. Help your students/users/patrons make connections. Use new technological tools to engage in different conversations. Design things to either remove the seams or make the seams, reasonable hurdles. Sure, you need to know how to type and mouse. You don’t necessarily need to know how to program at the machine level. I’d rather students spend time interacting than navigating a closed system. Going to school in a CMS: it’s like taking my Mazda3, 2.3 litre engine apart to change the oil. I don’t do that. I take my car to the mechanic these days. Because I want to drive fast on my way to very interesting places.

The days of locking my productive, creative work behind closed systems, it’s over. What I produce, I want to share. I want to take it with me. To other places on the web. Even if it’s not good and full of typos. And I’m doing it before someone says I can’t. I stamp all my work with a cc license. (And it’s doubtful I have anything to worry about there. In terms of someone stealing my work. I mean, it’s ok stuff but I’m not cracking the cosmo open in any of my papers.)

One reason why I read so many blogs and work to forge connections with people who leave comments. It’s like I get the best of both worlds. I get my masters while at the same time DIY-ing my education.

I save every paper I write. Every article I read -saved. Every message board post and bulky old school online chat -saved. Links -all go into delicious/iblee. Why? Because I revisit those ideas, change my mind on what I did, further develop them, or just laugh at how ridiculous my position was.

I’m learning all the old school, deep-critical thinking. I want to be building new school skills too and share and join and connect with other passionate learners. I’m not the only student who geeks out over talking about what they’re learning. Maybe. But I doubt it.

Watch the rise of edupunk/libpunk/studentpunk and watch it all get mashed up. and re-mixed.

Contributor: Lee

Leadership encompasses self-management and managing relationships with others. Such a characterization is best known as emotional intelligence. This article identifies the traits that comprise emotional intelligence and suggests which ones might be most important for library directors to possess. The article also compares the emerging set of traits to transformational and transactional leadership in an effort to suggest which traits apply to two other leadership styles.

–recent article by P. Hernon and N. Rossiter (2006).

Contributor: Lee

Be Nice to someone you usually ignore

There are people in your life that for your own reasons you take for granted and generally ignore. This could be a friend, a loved one or a total stranger…but you know who they are.

This happens to everyone.

Pick someone today, and make a point to be nice to that person. Don’t be phony. Be nice. Be kind. See what happens from there.

This reminded me of the way jennimi and Michael take notice of people. They do so in a supportive way that makes you want to have conversations with them.  Effective leaders have a way of engaging you in dialogue that makes you want to share your thoughts.  Overall, this strengthens what you end up talking about.  I like to think the higher lesson here, about being nice and conversing, stands as: we can/should expect higher levels of civility from each other.  Doing so, we move in newer, bolder directions as we explore issues close to our hearts.  I wouldn’t say fixating on that outcome is healthy though.

Contributor: Lee

“The other problem is that for all of the Post’s progress it still seems to regard itself largely as a newspaper that happens to publish its articles on the web, rather than a general media company that happens to publish a paper edition. Sometimes a traditional newspaper article is the best way to cover a story, but often (as in this case) it’s not.”

Sub out newspaper for library, publish for access, best practices for thinking about how a patron uses a library and you can kinda get the idea.  We need to think in new ways.  Libraries can become the new-old place where it’s cool again to ask for help -because it was before right.

Contributor: Lee

Palestrant rattled off his ideas...The pair made sense of Palestrant’s fuzzy ideas…Diagrams in hand, Palestrant went to venture-capital funds and returned with $40 million in start-up money. Firms like Humantific, whose founders are designers, apply the same process used in designing sleek MP3 players and ergonomic teakettles to unwieldy intangibles like cell-phone promotions and hospital organization, transforming their effectiveness. Along the way, the field is creating some unusual teamwork between designers and business people.

and

“Kamille Friis, a PhD student at Learning Lab in Denmark, … thesis focused on “Conscious Design Practice as a Strategic Tool.”

Contributor: Lee

What about your library? Is your map, useful? How do you know?

Contributor: Lee

89 References,
-21 book or other materials,
—
68 electronic-based references.

Let’s run down the links:

–> http://www.dothegreenthing.com/
–> http://www.greenmanifesto.org/
–> http://www.greenlibraries.org/
–> http://greeningyourlibrary.wordpress.com/
–> http:/Green_library
–> http://www.librisdesign.org/docs/
–> even the Bronx is getting in on this: http://www.nypl.org/press/2007/greencouncil.cfm

Contributor: Lee.

Contributor: Lee.

ScholarsArchive@OSU is Oregon State University’s digital service for gathering, indexing, making available and storing the scholarly work of the Oregon State University community.

Its primary goal is to provide freely-available and long-term access to the historic and contemporary intellectual work that makes Oregon State University faculty and students leaders in research, teaching and creativity. It also includes materials from outside the institution in support of the university’s land, sun, sea and space grant missions and other research interests.

Contributor: Lee.

Contributor: Lee